SOURCE: “Elder and Younger: The Opening Scene of The Comedy of Errors,” in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3, Autumn, 1983, pp. 325-27.

In the essay that follows, Parker contends that the opening narration of the shipwreck is frequently misread, and elaborates on the significance of these lines in the context of the work's larger themes.

Both Henry Cunningham and R. A. Foakes assume in their editions of The Comedy of Errors that there is an inconsistency in Egeon's narrative of the family's shipwreck in the play's opening scene. Egeon states first that it was the mother who was “more careful for the latterborn” (I.i.78), while he was responsible for the elder, when they bound themselves and the children to the “small spare mast” (l. 79). But then he appears, in their reading, to contradict himself when he says in line 124 that he was left with the “youngest” rather than the...